A STUDY by the consumer magazine Which? this year found the UK had one of the lowest state pensions in Europe.

While the Swedes get just over £25,000 a year, Britain’s current basic state pension is around £5500.

We are also way behind Ireland, which for all its difficulties still manages to pay a state pension of £10,415.

As for Germany – dream on – they get £26,366.

The Tories claim they plan to raise the state pension – I will believe that when I see it.

Experts say their reforms will leave most pensioners worse off.

Now, instead of asking the Tories why pensioners are getting a bad deal, Labour want to make it worse. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls wants to go further than George Osborne and extend the benefits cap to pensions.

He bragged to the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme: “I’ll have to be a chancellor who says no. That’s how it’s going to be.”

Driving the point home, he added: “Look across the whole welfare state and ask, ‘What are the drivers of expenditure?’

“I think many people watching your programme will not realise that actually, today the clear large bulk, most welfare spending, is in fact going to people over 60.”

Labour spin doctors just made things worse.

They said Balls really meant he would raise the retirement age to cut costs.

But the Tories have already announced that the retirement age will rise to 66 in 2020 and then to “at least 68” after that. Male life expectancy in Scotland is 75, among the lowest in Europe. So instead of a rest, many Scots will literally be working themselves into the grave under these Westminster plans.

It’s just the latest in a series of attacks on pensioners from Labour, since they moved closer to the Tories to campaign against the SNP.

The party’s Scottish Leader, Johann Lamont, has set up a cuts commission to get rid of free bus passes, prescriptions and free personal care.

Ed Miliband has attacked the winter fuel allowance, which Scots pensioners rely on even more than those in the south. Doesn’t he know that an extra 2000 Scots aged over 65 die during the winter months?

Political choices made at Westminster are responsible for our pensioners’ plight.

Margaret Thatcher scrapped the link between state pensions and earnings in 1981, and neither Labour’s Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown reversed that policy.

Nor did former Chancellor Alistair Darling, the leader of the No campaign, who received a standing ovation at last week’s Scottish Tory conference.

During 13 years of Labour government when bankers made billions, pensioners got poorer. Scotland could look after its pensioners much better as an independent country.

Official figures show that for the last 30 years Scots paid more to the London Treasury per head of population than the rest of the UK.

Last year it was £800 a head more. Pensions and welfare currently account for 42 per cent of the UK’s public spending.

According to the same Office for National Statistics figures, pensions and welfare would account for just 38 per cent of public spending in an independent Scotland.

We could easily afford to look after our elderly, who have worked hard and deserve a comfortable old age. Sticking with Westminster won’t help – whoever is in power.